Prototyping Advanced Technology Projects -Part 2
Prototyping Advanced Technology Projects is an article series around a framework for developing Advanced Technology Projects read part 1 to get up to speed with the series I will be using BreathTech- S³, Atmoblue as a case study.
Design For Manufacturing ( DFM )
When you are doing a product that is highly technical it's important to avoid mistakes that could lead to quality and productivity issues during manufacturing. when you work with budget and timeline constrains you can run into unexpected surprises elevating production costs , customer complains seriously damage business projections .Following a DFM as a technical framework or a guideline optimizes the design of the product so it can be manufactured in the most cost-effective way.Often incorporating these in the early design stage closely observing components costs as well as tooling and production costs will help to plan propper supply chain partners , correct production methods ,and accelerate the time to production and avoid delays.
Let's explore each step in the development journey
Development Focused stage comes after you have clearly identified the problem statement you want to solve.The stage can be further divided into much smaller iterations , It's important to plan these iterations and timebox them to see how much resources in terms of people and capital the project can afford to allocate in each section.
1.Duct-Tape prototypes to test product definitions and concept feasibility
Often in the proof of concept stage you need to use existing material Use existing materials, parts and components to prove that the new idea would work having constrained by costs its important to have to prove that the functionality and the theory of operations can be archived even though the most important function is archived iits not meant to be a working prototype.
It’s a formative stage in the product development process, and understand if there really is a market for the product also referred to as product/market fit have a benchmark point about costs regarding next steps.
When working with advanced materials such as graphene you need to have extremely expensive equipment to develop the necessary components its often wise to partner up with research institutes or universities that have access for such equipment . watch our journey
2.Functional Engineering Prototyping MVP
After your proof of concept can be tested and validated entering engineering prototype would be focused on creating a much more compact version.At this stage you can use development boards such as Arduino , node MCU , Raspberry pi and opensource libraries to test and check the functionality.In the Functional Engineering prototyping stage its important that your development platform support the algorithms and ML models you intend to use for signal processing tasks.Setting up a MVP feature backlog would help you to iterate faster and design the product to be able to use in the intended usecase setting, In our scenario we wanted to develop the prototype to be able to incorporate it into a mask and take active data on breathing rates , CO2 build up and mask fit while wearing the mask.
When it comes to designing software algorithms its important to set up a framework to be able to work with time-series data having Arduino type of IDE to visualize the data . Use Jupyter notebooks with TensorFlow , pytorch , pandas, numpy , matplotlib are some other libraries and frameworks .Streamlit is one of the other frameworks you can set up where you can build quick interactive applications to explore the data collected by your hardware device and deploy ML models for better calssifications and compare your results.
3. Product Design Prototyping
Once your MVP is at a stage where the functionality is tested and have confident resultsnow its time to think what is the best user interface for the product both in product engineering standpoint as well as the user experience. this answers the question “how will it look and feel?” and offers a taste of the final design
Using computer-aided design software you can visualize the product and have an initial look and feel for visual appearance .Once the visual appearance is completed you can use standard modeling software to create a version of the product that can be prototyped.It is important to understand what type of tooling is there and what prototyping method suites your needs.
In our case we chose SLS . During the SLS process, a computer-controlled CO2 laser draws onto a hot bed of nylon-based powder from the bottom up, where it lightly sinters (fuses) the powder into a solid. After each layer, a roller lays a fresh layer of powder on top of the bed and the process repeats. SLS uses either rigid nylon or elastomeric TPU powders similar to actual engineering thermoplastics, so parts exhibit greater toughness and are accurate, but have rough surface and lack fine details. SLS offers a large build volume, can produce parts with highly complex geometries and create durable prototypes.
With your current budget you can also choose much cheaper 3D printed prototypes , decide which stage you want to engage end users investors and what type of a first reaction you are expecting from the end users .
At this stage is to strike a balance between the use of viable materials and ones and costs, since prototypes can cost between 50–100x to create than the final mass-produced production products.
4. Beta Phase : Engineering Verification prototype
The Engineering Verification Prototype is the first iteration that combines visual, functional and manufacturing processes.It’s purpose is to be tested with a controlled group of end customers and field trials in order to demonstrate the product in the relative similar operational environment.
When it comes to the connected application all the functionality needs to be completed and deployed in target environments . Once the product is ready you can use standard test labs to test the product features and see if everything is with in the safety standards . At this stage Engineers need to work closely with subject experts and 3rd party laboratories to confirm your product is ready to be advanced to production prototyping stage. Team should have a clear understanding about the BOM — bill of materials , manufacturing techniques , QC processes and related timelines after negotiating and consulting with supply chain experts and multiple different factories .
With the next Article, we will go through what are the best ways to think about iterations when we move to production prototyping and the adventures in factories in China .
Prototyping Advanced Technology Projects is an article series around a framework for developing Advanced Technology Projects read part 1 to get up to speed with the series I will be using BreathTech- S³, Atmoblue as a case study.
